Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Oracle has released an update addressing security holes in Java

A Critical Patch Update is a collection of patches for multiple security vulnerabilities. The Critical Patch Update for Java SE also includes non-security fixes. Critical Patch Updates are cumulative and each advisory describes only the security fixes added since the previous Critical Patch Update and Security Alert. Thus, prior Critical Patch Update and Security Alert advisories should be reviewed for information regarding earlier accumulated security fixes.Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply CPU fixes as soon as possible.This Critical Patch Update contains 40 new security fixes across Java SE products of which 4 are applicable to server deployments of Java.

Supported Products Affected

Security vulnerabilities addressed by this Critical Patch Update affect the products listed in the categories below. Please click on the link in the Patch Availability column or in the Patch Availability Table to access the documentation for those patches.

Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply CPU fixes as soon as possible. Until you apply the CPU fixes, it may be possible to reduce the risk of successful attack by restricting network protocols required by an attack. For attacks that require certain privileges or access to certain packages, removing the privileges or the ability to access the packages from unprivileged users may help reduce the risk of successful attack. Both approaches may break application functionality, so Oracle strongly recommends that customers test changes on non-production systems. Neither approach should be considered a long-term solution as neither corrects the underlying problem.

Skipped Critical Patch Updates

Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply these fixes as soon as possible. For customers that have skipped one or more Security advisories, please review previous advisories to determine appropriate actions

This Critical Patch Update includes a fix to the Javadoc Tool. API documentation in HTML format generated by the Javadoc tool that contains a right frame may be vulnerable to frame injection when hosted on a web server. Sites hosting such pages should re-generate the API documentation using the latest Javadoc tool and replace the current pages with the re-generated Javadoc output (see CVE-2013-1571 below). In cases where regenerating API documentation is not feasible, a Java API Documentation Updater Tool that updates API documentation "in place" is available here.

The CVSS scores below assume that a user running a Java applet or Java Web Start application has administrator privileges (typical on Windows). When the user does not run with administrator privileges (typical on Solaris and Linux), the corresponding CVSS impact scores for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability are "Partial" instead of "Complete", lowering the CVSS Base Score. For example, a Base Score of 10.0 becomes 7.5.